Difficult History - teachers

The introduction has the objective of introducing the project and motivating students.

Students will learn about the project, the main objectives and the goals they have to achieve (creating a short documentary about their perspective on certain historical issues).

• Presentation videoclip →

• Assessment grid (annex 1)

• Organise the communication with the partner school (Skype, video, email, etc.) 

• Analyse and if necessary, adapt the assessment criteria to give to students. 

Introduction of the project:

a) Students will watch a video clip that presents the objective of the project —  creating a short 10-15 minute documentary and exchanging it with other European schools. This video is the same for all topics. 

If necessary, give more explanation to the students, addressing the objective of the lesson, the steps, timing, characteristics of the video clip students have to create, etc.

b) Set up a brief communication with the partner students, if possible via Skype: 

i. Students from each class should introduce themselves: Hello, this is our class. We are looking forward to this project, we are very excited. I am Michael, I’m 16 years old, Delphine: Hello..." 

ii. If a Skype meeting is not possible, prepare a short presentation video to send them or write an email with the presentation and add a picture of the class. 
- This activity does not have to take longer than 15-20 minutes but has a significant effect on student motivation and the success of the project. 
- If the students’ English level is poor, you can communicate via email, so they have time to prepare the communication and translate the answers. 

c) Explain the assessment criteria to the students.

The introduction has the objective of introducing the project and motivating students.

• Students will start reflecting on the topic “difficult history”, watching a prepared video based on the Bosnia-Herzegovina War 
• Students will start thinking about the research question: how should we deal with a difficult past?

• Difficult history starter clip →

It is crucial students understand the concept of difficult history as they will research and create a documentary based on it. In this lesson, they will start this process of “comprehension” that will continue in step 2. 

Difficult histories are events that

1) are central to a nation's history
2) contradict accepted histories or values
3) connect with present problems
4) involve violence enacted by the state or large groups of citizens
5) create disequilibria that require changes to historical understandings that may carry a personal or social cost.

         Source: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1179506 

1. Introduction of the topic: 

   1. On the blackboard, write:      difficult past    -     silenced history

   2. Ask students what they understand by these terms and how they think these terms could be related.

   3. Students should reflect on the following:

      1. Is this topic important? 

      2. what might be the perspective(s) of the different people involved?

   4. You can help students understand “difficult past” by providing them wiith some examples of difficult history (dictatorships, slavery, wars..) 

   5. Once students have understood these two terms, introduce the enquiry question. 

2. Introduction of the enquiry question: how do you think we should deal with a difficult past? 

   1. Ask students to individually write down their reflections on the enquiry question.

3. Motivational activity

   1. Watch the starter clip and comment on it as a whole class. If necessary, briefly explain the historical background of the clip (Balkan war) and focus on the topic of the question.  

   2. Some possible questions you could ask your students:

      1. Comprehension

         1. What is shown in the clip? 

         2. Who are the people in the clip? 

         3. What are the protagonists’ opinions on dealing with the past?

      2. Discussion

         1. Why do some people try to silence history? Why do others want to investigate it?

         2. What is your own perspective on this theme? How do think we should deal with the difficult past ? 

         3. Are there some historical episodes/events in your country that are not easy to talk about? What are they?

*At the end of the project students will come back to the enquiry question and write down reflections on it for the second time, comparing their responses to see if they have modified/developed ideas on the topic. It would be a good idea to take a picture of the ideas written on the blackboard.

During this lesson students will learn more about the Yugoslav wars in order to better understand the context of the videoclip and the different ways of dealing with the past.

Students will make inferences about how different actors in the war deal with it differently in order to draw conclusions about the reasons for “silencing “ or “investigating” history

In these lessons we provide you with a lot of materials. You are free to make choices in the historical assignments; use some texts instead of all or divide the assignments between the students.

• Character cards with some protagonists of the videoclip. The characters on the card are: Nikola Kuridža, Nikola’s mother, Fikret Bacic (the man with the shovel) and the inhabitants of Prijedor. They all have different opinions of the war. (annex 1) 

• Historical background (prior to the war) for the teacher (annex 2)

1. Introducing and analysing different characters in the video clip 

   1. Give a copy of the character cards to each group of four students. In the whole class discussion, try to remember who the characters are or watch some parts of the video clip to help point out who they are.

   2. Tell students to analyse the information that appears in the cards and identify how each character has dealt with their difficult past (silencing, confronting, etc.).

   3. Ask students to reflect on why different people think differently about the war. Why do they deal with the issue in different ways? What reasons could they have for doing so? What happened to make some think differently from others? 

2. Introducing the Bosnian War 

   1. Brainstorm with your students about their knowledge of the Bosnian War. Show them a map, so they know where Bosnia is located, and try to answer the 5W question in the whole class discussion. Tell them they will correct/ complete their answers later on.

   2. You can also ask them to locate the places that appear in the video clip on the map. Give a short explanation of the historical background of the area up to the beginning of the war (annex 1).

3. Researching the Yugoslav Wars

   Students will learn about the war in order to better understand the different opinions relating to it.

a) Yugoslav Wars 5W: 

If the groups are heterogeneous, you can assign the appropriate question to each of them as there are both lower level (when, where, who) and higher level questions (why and how).

Organise the class in groups of five. Each student will be in charge of answering one question and finding the information in the given sources to complete the factsheet (annex  5). 

b) Comparing territories before/after the war

Give or show the maps of different periods (annex 4) (at least before/after the war). Students will have to comment on the development of these territories in pairs. The last task (explain the reasons… ) could be kept for higher level students. You can give the students these guidelines:

Write a paragraph comparing the developments in these territories using the following guidelines:

1. Explain the reasons for the division of the territory

2. Description of the current territorial organisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (states, boundaries, etc.)

3. Similarities and differences you can see in both maps

Ottoman Rule (1463-1878)

During the early modern period much of the Balkans were under Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Empire was a fairly tolerant state. People could be relatively autonomous within their own millet. Each religious group was organised in a millet. In Bosnia this meant there were millets for catholics, the orthodox, jews and muslims. All of these groups lived close together — sometimes in neighbouring regions or villages, sometimes as nextdoor neighbours.

Nationalism (1878-1918)

The end of nineteenth century nationalism weakened the Ottoman Empire. The different peoples in the empire claimed an independent national state of their own. The Serbs revolted, the Greeks became independent, the Bosnians had an uprising. Austria and Russia tried to profit from the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, mingling and making new borders that didn’t always agree with ethnic or religious lines. Serbia became an independent state and claimed the lead over the slavic population of the former Ottoman territory in Europe. Bosnia was annexed by Austria, much against the will of the Serbs and Bosnians themselves.

World War I

This war started out as a war between Austria and Serbia for dominance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Defeated in the war, Austria had to give in. The end of the war also meant the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Both empires lost a large part of their former territory to new European states. In 1918, the first Yugoslavia was established, comprising Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia had a leading role in the new kingdom of Yugoslavia that lasted until 1941.

World War II

In 1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and established satellite fascist states in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia tried to resist but was hit very hard by fascist oppression and cruelty. This fueled feelings of hatred between the Serbs and Croats that would eventually surface.

Cold War

After World War II, Yugoslavia, called the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia,  came under communist rule, choosing a course independent from Moscow beginning in 1948. Differences between ethnic and religious groups were played down under the guidance of Josip Broz Tito. Until Tito’s death in 1980, Yugoslavia experienced a time of peace and grew to be a modern industrialised country. After Tito’s death, Serbia tried to hold on to its dominant position but things started to get complicated. When the Cold War ended in 1989, the Serbian leadership changed its course from communism to nationalism. This set off nationalist politics in the other republics. Yugoslavia was beginning to disintegrate.

A number of ethnic and religious groups lived together in former Yugoslavia: Orthodox Serbs, Roman-Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks and other minorities. 

This lesson serves as a link between the history of the conflict and the research students do on their own.

Students learn about several examples of “difficult history” and discover that it is not something unique to Bosnia but a global phenomenon which primarily generates conflicts on a local level.

• Connects with the first and second lesson -> needed as preparation

• Screenshots from the short video clip “Bosnia/Difficult history”

• Prepare texts (see Learning Materials) on this lesson for group work. As a teacher, feel free to choose other examples of “difficult histories” you know about and that match the interests and needs of your students.

1. Introduction:

   1. Projection of 1 or 2 screenshots from the initial video clip. 

   2. Students are asked to briefly explain what is meant by “difficult history” (review activity about Bosnia)

2. Students in groups of 4 or 5 choose one topic from the list and read the respective text from the learning materials.

   1. In their group they answer the following questions:

      1. What part of history was “silenced” because they it was difficult to talk about?

      2. By whom? And why?

      3. Who made the story public? Why? 

      4. What were the consequences of the public discussion?

   2. Students mix groups. In each new group there is one (expert) student for a different text/topic. They present and compare the results of the first group activity by trying to answer the following questions:

      1. Why did people try to silence history?

      2. State if these initiatives were successful. Why or why not?

3. Conclusion: 

   1. Are there difficult histories/events in our own community and how can we discover them? (introduction to local research)

4. Homework:       

   1. Tell students to:

      1. Look for stories of “difficult history” in your country or even known cases in your town, region or state.

      2. Ask your parents, teachers and/or local journalists if there is any initiative in your school town or in the region to commemorate a historical event that is not yet officially recognized? Look for recent demonstrations, flyers, posters, graffiti in the streets, etc.”

List of possible topics:

1. Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (Argentina). Information sources 

2. Secret protocols brought to light by singing: Baltic way (Soviet Union, especially Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

3. Holodomor: Memories of Ukraine's silent massacre (Ukraine/Russia)

4. Torture during the Algerian War of Independence (France / Algeria)

5. An inconvenient history: The story of the Moluccans (Netherlands/Indonesia)

6. The history of the EL-DE-House (Cologne, Germany)

Forty years later, Argentina’s bravest mothers keep marching.

[...] Forty years ago, 14 women gathered in a Buenos Aires square known as Plaza de Mayo. They were looking for their children, who had disappeared at the hands of the military dictatorship. They were scared, but their desire to find their loved ones was stronger than their fear. They spontaneously decided to join forces in order to force the military junta to give them some answers.

None of them could have imagined at the time that they were planting the seeds of a movement that would never be eradicated from the square, and which would grow to be known the world over.

These days, the capital of Argentina is organizing music festivals, photography exhibitions, symposiums and documentary screenings as a tribute to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the brave souls who became a symbol of resistance against the horrors of the regime.

At first, they would sit on the benches and talk, using their knitting as a cover to throw off the uniformed guards who stared at them suspiciously. Any gathering of three or more people was forbidden under the state of siege, and at one point a police officer told them to keep moving. The women got up and began circling the monument to Belgrano and then the Pirámide de Mayo, across from the government palace known as Casa Rosada. “When he told us to keep moving, he triggered an endless dance,” says Nora Cortiñas, whose son Carlos Gustavo Cortiñas was kidnapped, never to be seen again, 15 days before the creation of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Just like him, men and women who were members of guerrilla groups, political organisations and unions were being dragged out of their homes and plucked from the streets and taken to clandestine detention centers. Because no charges were ever brought against them, nor their location disclosed, the people who were “sucked up” in this way became los desaparecidos, or the disappeared.

The list of crimes perpetrated by the state included kidnappings, torture, baby theft from women who gave birth while in prison, and forced disappearances that took many forms, including the “death flights” in which detainees were drugged and weighed down before being thrown off aircraft and into the River Plate.

“At first we had high hopes of finding them alive,” explains Hebe de Bonafini, president of Madres de Plaza de Mayo. “We were certain that we would find them, and that is why we put all our energy and love into that effort.”

“We couldn’t imagine that it was going to be so brutal,” adds Mirta Baravalle, whose daughter Ana María was kidnapped in 1976, when she was five months pregnant. The state repression had begun in 1974, but it surged after the military coup of March 24, 1976. In just a few months, the desaparecidos could be counted by the thousands. At police precincts and prisons, women ran into other women looking just as downcast as themselves, and asked: “You too?”

“There were 14 mothers at first; when I joined we were already 20, and the number grew by the week,” recalls Cortiñas. A few months later they began wearing white headscarves – originally these were their children’s cloth nappies – and the head covering quickly became the symbol of their struggle.

The regime wrote them off as “those crazy women,” but they didn’t care. Week after week, they marched around the central monument on Plaza de Mayo to demand that their children be returned to them alive and given a proper trial if it turned out that they had committed any crimes. The movement did not peter out even when three of its members were kidnapped in late 1977, including founder Azucena Villaflor. They were betrayed by a former navy captain, Alfredo Astiz, who infiltrated the group after passing himself off as the brother of a missing man. [...]

The association celebrated Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 and the trial of junta members who were sentenced to life in prison. But they kept on fighting against the impunity that was encoded into laws by the Raúl Alfonsín administration (1983-1989) and the government pardons awarded by Carlos Menem (1989-1999) to the regime leaders.

Their demands for justice and for the preservation of the memory of the 30,000 people who disappeared under the military regime were bolstered by the derogation of amnesty laws under the Kirchners. Hundreds of trials have since been reopened, turning Argentina into a global role model.

Now mostly octogenarians, the Mothers keep going to the square every Thursday. They have been divided since 1986, when a splinter group broke off and founded Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Línea Fundadora due to disagreements over state compensation and the identification of remains. But there are still more things uniting them than dividing them. “30,000 disappeared, present!” they all chant out from both sides of the square, as though challenging the new administration of President Mauricio Macri for daring to question that figure.

“Mothers of the square, the people embrace you,” they often hear from passersby. In the meantime, the Madres cling to the belief that they will one day find out what happened to all the missing victims of the repression and to the hope that new generations will carry on their fight.

Taken from https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/01/inenglish/1493637018_186924.html [05/15/2019]

The Baltic Way was a peaceful political demonstration that occurred in August 1989 in the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The protest was designed to draw attention to the desire for independence from the Soviet Union of each of the Baltic countries, an independence that was lost in 1940. More than 2 million people stood holding hands and sang songs along the Baltic way, a road connecting the three Baltic capitals Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. 

What happened?

Between the two world wars the Baltic countries were independent states. In 1939 the German and Soviet foreign ministers von Ribbentrop and Molotov concluded a treaty of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The pact included secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between themselves. This resulted in the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States in 1940.

source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ribbentrop-Molotov_Pact.jpg

Nina Karpenko, an energetic 87-year-old, demonstrates what it took to survive Ukraine's Stalin-era famine, known as the Holodomor, or "death by hunger". Some cheap cornmeal, wheat chaff, dried nettle leaves and other weeds - this was the essence of life during the horrific winter and early spring of 1932-33 in Ukraine. [...] "There was a deathly silence," she says. "Because people weren't even conscious. They didn't want to speak or to look at anything." [...]

Ukrainians mark a Holodomor Remembrance Day every year on the fourth Saturday of November. Some historians, like Yale University's Timothy Snyder, who has done extensive research in Ukraine, place the number of deaths at roughly 3.3 million. Others say the number was much higher. Whatever the actual figure, it is a trauma that has left a deep and lasting wound among this nation of 45 million. Entire villages were wiped out, and in some regions the death rate reached one-third. The Ukrainian countryside, home of the "black earth", some of the most fertile land in the world, was reduced to a silent wasteland. Cities and roads were littered with the corpses of those who left their villages in search of food, but perished along the way. There were widespread reports of cannibalism.

But the pain of the Holodomor comes not only from the unfathomable number of deaths. Many people believe the causes were man-made and intentional. A genocide. They say that Joseph Stalin wanted to starve into submission the rebellious Ukrainian peasantry and force them into collective farms. The Kremlin requisitioned more grain than farmers could provide. When they resisted, brigades of Communist Party activists swept through the villages and took everything that was edible. "The brigades took all the wheat, barley - everything - so we had nothing left," says Ms Karpenko. "Even beans that people had set aside just in case. "The brigades crawled everywhere and took everything. People had nothing left to do but die."

As the hunger mounted, Soviet authorities took extra measures, such as closing off Ukraine's borders, so that peasants could not travel abroad and obtain food. This amounted to a death sentence, experts say. "The government did everything it could to prevent peasants from entering other regions and looking for bread," says Oleksandra Monetova, from Kiev's Holodomor Memorial Museum. "The officials' intentions were clear. To me it's a genocide. I have no doubt."

But for others, the question is still open. Russia in particular objects to the genocide label, calling it a "nationalistic interpretation" of the famine. Kremlin officials insist that, while the Holodomor was a tragedy, it was not intentional, and other regions in the Soviet Union suffered at that time.

Kiev and Moscow have clashed over the issue in the past. [...] Mr Baley, an American composer who was born in Ukraine, supports efforts to have the Holodomor recognised internationally as genocide. "You have to admit that it was done, if you want to have any kind of human progress," he says. "You can't wrap it up and say that it wasn't."

Excerpts taken from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25058256 [05/15/2019]

During the 1954-62 war, which claimed 1.5 million Algerian lives, French forces brutally cracked down on independence fighters in the then colony, which was ruled by Paris for 130 years.

The French state has never previously admitted that its military forces routinely used torture. During the war the government censored newspapers, books and films that claimed it had used torture, and after the war the atrocities committed by its troops remained a taboo subject in French society.

In 2018 France has officially acknowledged for the first time that it carried out systematic torture during Algeria’s independence war – a landmark admission about conduct in the conflict which ended 56 years ago [1962] and that has been shrouded in secrecy and denials. The president, Emmanuel Macron, said France instigated a “system” that led to torture during the Algeria conflict, and the past must now be faced with “courage and lucidity”.

Macron used the case of the mathematician Maurice Audin, a Communist pro-independence activist who disappeared in 1957, to make a far-reaching comment about France’s sanctioning of torture, going further than any previous president. The Elysée said Macron would acknowledge in a letter to be presented to Audin’s widow and family on Thursday afternoon that Audin “died under torture stemming from the system instigated while Algeria was part of France”.

[...]  Audin’s family has for years been seeking the truth over his disappearance. An assistant professor at the University of Algiers, Audin was 25 when he was arrested at his home by French paratroopers and accused of harbouring armed members of the Algerian Communist party. He was tortured repeatedly in a villa in the Algiers neighbourhood of El Biar.

His widow, Josette, was told 10 days later that the mathematician had escaped while being transferred between jails. This remained the official version of events until 2014, when Macron’s predecessor François Hollande acknowledged that Audin died in detention.

Macron’s office said he would detail a system of arrest and detention legally put in place by parliament and decree in the late 1950s that allowed forces to hold and interrogate suspects, leading to “acts that were sometimes terrible, including torture.” Macron will announce that archives will be fully opened up to historians, families and organisations seeking the truth about the large number of disappeared civilians and soldiers, both French and Algerian, whose bodies have never been found.

Excepts taken from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/france-state-responsible-for-1957-death-of-dissident-maurice-audin-in-algeria-says-macron [05/15/2019].

After the independence of Indonesia from Dutch colonial rule in 1945, the Dutch fought a violent war to stop the decolonisation of Indonesia. When the Dutch government in 1949 acknowledged the independence,  many people from Indonesia went to the Netherlands.

Among the Indonesians, the  Moluccans, who were in a special position, went to the Netherlands. The Moluccans are the Austronesian-speaking and Papuan-speaking ethnic groups indigenous to the Maluku Islands.  For ages Moluccans had been recruited in the Dutch colonial army. They were considered good soldiers and very loyal to Dutch authority.

After the war of independence, the Moluccans found themselves in an awkward, uncomfortable, situation and the Moluccans declared themselves independent from Indonesia.

The EL-DE House (pronounced: L-D-House) owes its name to the initials of the building owner Leopold Dahmen. The Catholic wholesaler of gold articles and clocks lived with his family on Appellhofplatz 21, from where he also ran his business. In order to build the house next door, he had two residential buildings torn down on the corner lot on Elisenstraße. Then, during 1934/35, a larger house with both residential and commercial space was built. [...]

After a delay in the construction work, the unfinished house was seized by the Gestapo in the summer of 1935. Existing rental agreements had to be terminated; the new tenant was the Third Reich. For the Gestapo, the representative building right at the heart of the city provided an excellent location. It was virtually around the corner from the Police headquarters on Krebsgasse, the court building and the Klingelpütz central prison. The Gestapo had the building converted according to its purposes: the living space was turned into offices and the house prison with its ten cells was installed on the upper basement level. On 1 December 1935, the Cologne Gestapo branch started to operate from there and only ceased working on 2 March 1945, a few days before the arrival of the American troops on 6 March 1945. It seems a particular irony of history that this house remained standing after the war whilst most other surrounding buildings had been destroyed.

In terms of the history of its construction, the house only acquired its bulky appearance after the war when numerous extensions were added. During the years 1947 to 1949, annexes were added on Elisenstraße, replacing the destroyed residential building of the Dahmen family and one other house next to it, completely merging with the surviving Gestapo house [...]. Only because of the additions after 1945, does the EL-DE House reflect the image of the feared, all-dominating Gestapo by way of its dimensions.

The carefree approach that was adopted to the history of the house, and to its NS past after the war, becomes apparent in other ways. The house was used by tenants again immediately after the end of the war, mostly by the City of Cologne. The Occupation Office, the Pricing Authority, the Office for Defence Expenses, the Registry, the Pension Office and the Legal and Insurance Authority had their offices there. Some of the people who had been interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo in these very rooms had to get married or submit their pension applications there.

Initially it was one lone fighter, Sammy Maedge, a gilder of weather-cocks for Church spires, who mounted public campaigns to draw attention to the history of the EL-DE House in the mid-1960’s. The reputed exhibition of the Cologne History Archive ‘Resistance and persecution in Cologne 1933–1945’ highlighted in detail for the first time, essential parts of the NS history of the City of Cologne. The story of the EL-DE House however, was only mentioned in passing. It was only subsequent to the US-American television series ‘Holocaust’ and the trial of Kurt Lischka and other NS perpetrators at the courthouse across the street that EL-DE House began to garner national attention. Maedge succeeded in triggering a bigger response to his activities in 1979. Around the same time, the teacher Kurt Holl and the photographer Gernot Huber hid in the basement of the EL-DE House and had themselves locked in after the municipal Legal and Insurance Office closed for the day in order to take pictures of the cells and the inscriptions during the night and then present them to the public. Finally, the request to turn the former Gestapo house prison into a memorial came to fruition and the City Council gave its permission in late 1979. The inscriptions the prisoners had written on or carved into the walls were carefully uncovered, restored and painstakingly deciphered before being masterfully edited by an archivist of the Cologne History Archive, Manfred Huiskes. Furthermore, a double cell that had been used as a coal cellar after 1945 was turned into a room for a small exhibition about the history of the Cologne Gestapo and the general history of National Socialism in Cologne. Photographs of inscriptions were reproduced, translated and mounted on relatively simple boards in the aisles of the former prison. On 4 December 1981, the former Gestapo house prison was finally opened for the public as a memorial.

Excerpts taken from: https://museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/default.aspx?s=715 [05/15/2019] and https://museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/default.aspx?s=724 [05/15/2019]

HINT: You will find a 360° visit to the centre and memorial here: https://museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/medien/rundgang.aspx?rnr=0_0_1&lang=uk

During this step students will create a historical documentary in groups, after researching the topic in their own environment.

• To learn how to create a documentary 

• To make a documentary of 10 minutes in groups of 4 to 6 students after being assigned different roles

• Groups of 4-6 students

• Tutorials for documentary

• Steps for each function (annex 2). The steps follow the information given in the tutorials and as they are connected to certain roles, the information is also linked in the role cards.  

  • Researching  

  • Interviewing 

  • Filming 

  • Editing 

• Assessment grid for the documentary (annex 3). 

• Statement of consent (annex 4)

• Specifications for filming on mobile phones (annex 5)

• Make copies of the roles and their functions. All the students will be researchers so make copies for each of them. The other functions will be assigned to one/two students in each group depending on the number of students. 

• Give the assessment grid to the students before starting the creation of the documentary in case you want to use it as a frame for assessing the students.

• As the teacher, watch all the tutorials in advance so that you know what the students are going to be doing and understand how the various functions fit together. The tutorial upload and refind is specific for teachers to upload to the European server.

1. Introduction 

   1. Tell students they will create the documentary in groups of 4-6 and that  they will have different roles whilst creating it. There are four roles:

      1. Researcher: done by the whole group. Research is a key part of making a documentary. Make sure your teams have 2 researchers to keep working on this research, finding background information and the right materials during the process.

      2. Interviewer: in charge of preparing the questions and doing the interview.

      3. Cameraman/woman: will record the interview and images needed.

      4. Editor: will edit the film with the help of his/her colleagues.

2. Organising roles and watching tutorials 

   1. Divide the roles among the groups or let the students choose a role and give them their role cards. For groups of 6, some functions can be duplicated.

   2. Give each student his/her role card. Ask them to carefully read their role cards and watch the tutorials. As the research will be done by all the students, you can watch this tutorial as a class. The other tutorials can be watched individually as homework. 

3. Researching 

   1. Students will do the main part of the research on the topic in class. Before starting, remind them that they started finding a local example in Step 2 Part 2 in the conclusion of the lesson and their homework. Be sure all the groups have a topic/subtopic to start the research. 

   2. It may be difficult for students to identify an appropriate person to interview in their own environment. Tell the students that this person does not have to be someone who has direct experience, but can also be someone who is an expert, or whose family experienced the topic students are researching. This increases the range of topics that can be addressed. 

   3. Explain students that the videos have to be in English, because otherwise, your partner school will not be able to watch your videos in the last exchange lesson. 

If the interview partner is not able (or willing) to do the interview in English, they can do the interview in any other language but then they would have to add English subtitles to their video for the interview parts. The tutorial upload explains how to add subtitles after editing

4. 4. The last step of the research is to plan the creation of the movie. Let students do it themselves based on the information provided in their role/steps documents, but check the planning as they will do the following activities out of school. 

5. Out of school activities 

   1. Students will do the interviewing/filming and editing out of school. 

   2. During the filming phase, organise an opportunity for the students to have contact with you for questions and support (mail contact, a walk-in consultation hour, etc.).

   3. Remind students that, as it appears in the interview/filming tutorial, they have to ask for the written permission of the people they interview. In the case your students interview a person under 18, they have to ask for written permission from their parent via the Quitclaim or statement of constent (annex 4).

6. Uploading

   1. As a teacher, watch the tutorial Upload and refind The tutorial will lead you through the uploading process step by step.

   2. Make sure the uploading is done at least one day before the meeting with your partner class. 

   3. Allocate 10 minutes of uploading time for 1 video, depending on the speed of your internet. For a whole class with low speed internet this could take up an hour and a half.

Try to create a stable environment by using a tripod or a chair to lean on.

If possible, use an additional microphone. If you do not have one, avoid filming too far away from your sound object or person.

You could also use an extra phone to record the sound but then you have to synchronise both phones using a clap:

• Start the audio on one phone and the camera on the other. Now synchronise by clapping your hands slowly. Make sure you record and film the hands and sound.

• Do not stop your phone after this point. If you stop, you will have to sync again.

• When editing, you can synchronise the clap with the image of the clap and then the sound and image will run at the same speed.

And last but not least, watch the filming tutorial before you start shooting.

Good luck !

This step is the most interesting and important part of the project, as students will watch others’ videos and exchange their opinions about the topic. 

Students will compare and discuss their conclusions about the topic and enquiry question within the school and with the partner school after watching the documentaries they have all produced.

• The videos of your class correctly uploaded to the web

• The links to the videos made by the students of the partner school

• Assessment grid for co-assessing the videos (annex 1) if you haven't given them to students before.

• Agree on exchange and discussion with the teacher from the partner school (  platform, timing, etc). This could be done in a asynchronous (Skype, hangout, etc.) or a-synchronous way like by email or in a Q&A-forum as it is not always possible to arrange for two classes in two different schools to synchronise schedules.

• To prepare for this session, students could send questions to the other school to discuss during the screening of each other’s documentaries. This would also help to structure the exchanges. If the students list their possible questions first, the teacher can select the ones that are most interesting. 

1. Explain to students that they will watch the documentaries they created along with those created by their European colleagues, and then afterwards, they will have a discussion session with the partner school.

2. Sharing and commenting activities  

   1. Sharing and commenting on the videos within schools   

      1. Share the videos with the whole class. 

      2. Organise a discussion and feedback session afterwards. 

      3. Remind your students to:

         1. be respectful commenting

         2. appreciate the work done by the other students

         3. give constructive feedback

         4. compare the similarities and differences of the local/regional cases

         5. discuss the ethical dimension of different attitudes and behaviours in relation to "a difficult past".

      4. Students can fill in the assessment grid for co-assessing the videos of their colleagues, now or at the end of the project. 

3. 2. Sharing of the videos between schools and preparing for discussion  

      1. Share and watch the videos from the partner class. Give background to the regional or national history reflected in the videos. 

      2. Prepare the students for discussion with the partner class: 

         1. What are you  going to talk about?

         2. How will students organise themselves to participate?

4. 3. Discussion between schools 

      1. Understand, compare and discuss the videos with the other group via Skype, chat, etc.

      2. Questions about the videos can relate to specific details, background or aspects the students may not be familiar with or fully understand.

      3. The idea would be to analyse the different perspectives shown through the videos (outcomes: differences/similarities ) with questions like:

         1. Compare the case studies, what similarities can you find?

         2. What are the differences? Do you think these differences are specific for this town/region/country or dependent on other factors? 

         3. Does the partner class have the same viewpoint on the issue?  

         4. Did they provide information or viewpoints that were previously unknown to you?

5. Conclusion 

   1. If time allows, take a moment to draw conclusions from the discussion session in a whole class setting.

This lesson will close the project, providing opportunities for individual/group reflection and assessment focused on the topics covered throughout the lesson, the documentary-making process and the project as a whole.

Students will reflect on the development of their opinions on the topic and self-assess/co-assess their documentaries, the projects and their experience of sharing their perspectives with other European students.

• The picture you took in the first step, where students provided their initial opinions on the research question. This will be a useful tool for contextualising the development of their ideas throughout the project. 

• Examples/suggestions for individual/group reflection, including the European dimension

• Assessment grid for co-assessing the videos and assessment grid for the teacher to assess the documentary if it was not given to students previously (annex 1)  

1. Introduction

   1. Explain to students that they will reflect on and assess the whole project.

2. Reflection activity 

   1. Discuss the research question by using the students’ answers from the first lesson to incite discussion and to see if and how they changed their opinions on the question.

   2. Write group/individual reflections on the topic and the enquiry question.

      1. Reflection can focus on student feelings, reactions and drawing comparisons between the ideas they had at the beginning of the lesson and the ones they developed after having learnt about the topic. 

      2. Points of discussion could include: the video and its context, global and local examples, knowledge of other students’ opinions, etc.

      3. You can also ask students to write down whether or not they have changed their mind/developed new thoughts and why. 

         1. This can be first be done at an individual level, so that students reflect on their own development. Afterwards, reflection can be expanded to a whole class discussion. If you have a picture of their opinions from the beginning of the project, you can project it and let students make comparisons.

3. Assessment

   1.  Assessment has multiple parts:

      1. Assessing the topic and quality of the videos the students have created. 

         1. This can be done as co-assessment and/or completed by the teacher, using the assessment grid. 

      2. Assessing the complete project. 

         1. Prepare some questions to discuss individually/in small groups:

            1. How did you feel about group work? (roles, timing, responsibilities, etc.) 

            2. Do you think it is important to research and discuss controversial topics like these?

            3. Did the exchange with other students help open your mind to new ideas about the topic? 

         2. Have students write down two of the best aspects of the project and two things to improve. 

4. Conclusion 

   1. Evaluate the project: 

      1. What was it like making a film? 

      2. What was it like working with a class from another country? 

      3. For both questions: What was especially difficult? What would you/ what should we do differently if organising a similar project in the future?

* Please fill this short questionnaire with your class after you have closed the project